AWP #19 was held in Portland, Oregon March 27-30, and I
attended for the first time.
The follow
up e-mails indicated 15,000 attendees.
There were over 500 events, panels, speakers, and book signings
scheduled, and there were 880 vendors in the Bookfair. All I can say is,
“It was A LOT!”
I don’t fancy myself an author, despite the publication of
“Distilling Hope.” However, I have
recently begun to wander into the realm of personal stories for performance
purposes, and find it a path full of land mines! I decided to take advantage of those panels
that spoke to the realm of the personal narrative as a way to feed my
storytelling Muse.
T Kira Madden has
written “Here’s to the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” a powerful story of a woman
whose parents were addicts. She was
asked how she managed to portray these less than perfect parents with any kind
of compassion. Here response was that
she “had to give them a heart.” Tears
came unbidden.
My father was an alcoholic.
Until my boys were 3 and 7 years old, I was an active alcoholic, as was
their dad. My brother, their uncle, was
an alcoholic. That particular kind of neglect was all around them, and I
carried that guilt for a very long time, in spite of the fact that I got sober
and stayed that way. I still do,
sometimes. I hope and pray that my
parenting as a sober woman was good enough, attentive enough, nurturing enough
for them to forgive me. My sons say they
harbor no ill will towards me, and assure me that my parenting was “good
enough.”
I realized I was a fatherless girl, and I was able to
forgive him. I guess I should believe my
sons.
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